


A Nightmare In A Daydream

by BloodiedRose



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Murder, Horror, Multi, Original Character Death(s), Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Spirits, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 19:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5346596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, Jo sees a shop that can grant any desire for an appropriate price. Soon after, she begins to start seeing far more than that. </p><p>xxxHolic fusion AU, with Henry as the shop owner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Nightmare In A Daydream

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this was going to be a Halloween fic. Then I was considering using it as part of the crossover ficathon, but fanfic takes a bit of a back burner when compared to final exams. There are also some weird things with tenses, because I like messing with stuff when I'm writing horror.
> 
> This fic requires no knowledge of xxxHolic. It is a manga by CLAMP, and I do recommend it highly. And the anime adaptation is actually pretty good too. The title is partially inspired by the second ending theme song, Kagerou, which means the wisps you see in the air when it's really hot and you are dazed. Which is good considering I wrote the bulk of this fic in 28 degree weather.

Jo sees it one day, after she had been called in on a case. A Roman villa, standing amidst tall New York buildings and high rises. And yet, it had not been drowned in shade cast by the giants surrounding it. On the contrary, it was bathed in the sunlight that the skyscrapers were desperate to conceal. Almost as if there were buildings around it at all.

Passers by paid no attention to it, acting as if it was not anything out of the ordinary. As if perfect replicas of a Roman villa were commonplace in twenty first century New York. No one stopped even to admire the architecture. She wondered if the building was common knowledge in this area of the city, and these people had been exposed to the sight so often they had become immune. However, none of her fellow cops seemed to pay much attention to it either, possibly more occupied by the double homicide waiting on the fourth floor. 

A double homicide. Two wives, shot in their home on the long weekend. They deserved her attention more. Jo cast thoughts of the strange building to the back of her mind, and entered the setting appropriate building containing her crime scene.

\---

She sees it again, when on a walk through the neighbourhood. Still standing proud, still ignored. Through the gate she could catch glimpses of people, at least two walking around. Yet no one else paid even the slightest bit of attention.

Curiosity caused her feet to move forward and get closer to the villa. Steadily walking forward until she stood directly in front of the gate, immaculate hedges surrounding the plot of land. White marble glistened, without chips or decay. There was not a single sign that the villa had seen any weathering or age. 

In the garden Jo saw two men. One was old, but he carried himself as if he was young. He bounced around the garden, uprooting weeds with a powerful tug and snipping wayward branches with his gardening sheers. Behind him was a young man with ancient eyes, sipping at a china cup and listening intently while his companion prattled on. 

It was the young man that saw her first. He did not draw attention to her presence, just watches her while his lips curl into a soft smile. The old man took longer to notice her, and only did so because he wants to discern what his companion was looking at. He turned to look at her, and also smiled. 

“Hello, Ma’am,” he said, and she cannot shake the feeling that the man’s soul was too young for his body. 

“I’m sorry,” she replied, and it was like her mouth was moving on its own. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just… curious.” Wind dusted the leaves hanging from olive trees.

“Curious about what?” The old man asked, and the young man had not moved at all. Just watching her, calmly. She blinked.

“The architecture is unusual considering the city, and no one else seemed to notice but it kept catching my eye and I figured this place has been here so long that no one cared anymore but it looks brand new.” Jo was babbling now, she knew she was. 

The young man sat down his cup. 

“This place is a shop. A shop that grants desires. For you to have noticed it means that you have a wish you want granted.”

Jo didn’t think that she had heard anything so absurd in a long time. A shop that could grant wishes? At best, it was some new age thing that she wanted nothing to do with. At worst, they were scam artists preying on the desperate. She wondered what they were claiming to be able to help. Marital woes? Failing grades? Illness and death?

Her hand jumped to the wedding ring around her neck, her ring finger still feeling naked without it. Every piece of her had ached with the loss of her husband. Each morning she woke to find his side of the bed empty and cold, until she had given up and had taken to sleeping in the bed of strangers instead. If she had the opportunity, would she take it?

“You can grant any wish?” Jo asked, and the man reclined on the steps.

“For a price.” Con men. Stupid con men. She scoffs beneath her breath, yet the man continued. “But not money. Every action requires something of equal value. For every wish I grant I must be compensated by something of equal importance, lest the world become unbalanced.” 

“Can you…” She took a deep breath. Her adulthood had been spent scorning the mystical, and in any other circumstance she would have abandoned this without a second thought. And her childhood had been spent with her grandmother warning her constantly, of spirits and demons and the woman in white. It had been drummed into her constantly- you do not mess with the spiritual realm. But she had to know. She was uncertain what she would do with the information, but she has to know. “Can you bring back the dead?”

The young man’s eyes became sorrowful, and he bowed his head.  
“I cannot. And before you ask, no one can.”

Jo exhaled, her heart hammering in her chest. She could not tell if she was in despair, or if she was relieved. Guilt consumed her for considering it, while her heart broke at the confirmation that she would not see her husband again. 

“I don’t think I have any desires. I was just… curious.” The man maintained his soft smile, but his gaze had become penetrating. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

Jo had turned away to leave, when the man called out to her. 

“I will see you soon, Detective Martinez.”

She suddenly felt incomprehensibly torn, half of her begging to never leave the shop again and the rest screaming that she run as far away as she could.

\---

The visions began after her visit to the shop. Shadows grinning with sharp teeth, reaching out boneless fingers to grab at young children whom had let go of their mother’s hand whilst strolling through the street. A woman walking briskly down the street, her face spinning between a calm facade and a wailing truth. 

Smoke choked her as she walked down the street, encasing the lost and the helpless in a shroud of despair. Voices called to her, bitter and desperate and angry followed by the deep chuckles of that which was not human. 

A gruesome crime scene, a woman that had killed herself and her young son, brought it to a peak. She could see the inky mass feeding off of the horror felt by the police officers, clinging to the woman’s corpse as it leaked steadily from her slit throat. 

Her son was huddled in the corner, covered in stab wounds that each wept confusion. The mother crouched over her boy, shushing him and petting his hair as she drove the knife deeper into his skin. Jo moved forward, desperate to stop the woman, but both of them were already dead. She had no more power over the wisps before her as she did over next week's weather. 

The mass leaking from the mother began to float forward, sliming closer towards Jo. It cracked it’s mouth open, blood and meat oozing from the hideous bones that it probably claimed was teeth. As it inched closer, Jo felt the mother’s sorrow and her son’s terror build within her. The monster tipped the top of it’s head backwards, emitting a high pitched shriek.

Jo fled, coming to a stop somewhere down the hall as her stomach wrenched her body forward and she vomited on her shoes. 

\---

“What did you do to me?!” Jo demanded, having stormed into the villa in search of the man. The older man raised his eyebrows, but the younger man had no reaction. Instead, he rose to his feet. 

“I did nothing, Detective Martinez.”

“How do you know my name?!” Jo was yelling, and she knew that she should probably stop, that chances were that the man had nothing to do with it. Likely, she was losing it, and had just burst into a stranger’s home in order to interrogate him. But she could not stop. 

The young man closed his eyes, before opening them again after a brief pause.  
“Jo Martinez. Detective with the NYPD. Thirty nine years old, recently widowed after nine years of being happily married.”

“Anyone can look that up-”

“I knew your grandmother.”

Abuela's place always smelled of candles and each time Jo stepped over the threshold she felt overwhelmed with the smell and fear pressing itself against her head. Fear that this place would sweep her away as if it were a riptide, accompanied with the unsettling feeling that this was the only place she was truly safe. 

It was the same feeling she got when she entered the shop. 

“She was a business associate,” the man continued. “One of the few that remained trustworthy and genuine throughout their lives. Witches like that are becoming increasingly rare these days.”

Jo felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach, the feeling that she got when her gut directed her to something that would usually end up with a murderer behind bars. She knew that she had found her answer, but was not sure that she wanted to believe it. 

“If it’s not your fault that I’m seeing these things-” 

The man winced, but looked only vaguely apologetic. As if he had just been caught taking the last cookie. 

“I said that I had not done anything, not that it wasn’t my fault. This shop stands as a link between the human world and the spiritual one, and being close to that much power likely triggered something.”

Jo took a deep breath. “Can you make it go away? My wish- I want the visions to go away.”

“You would have to pay the price. Something equal. Your gut instinct, your ability as a detective… it is drawn from the same thing as your visions. Your price would be to forfeit both.”

Jo’s stomach plummeted. How many criminals would go free without her instincts, without her ability to read people? How many lives would they go on to ruin? Could she live with herself, with the knowledge that every murder that went unsolved may be her fault? Her instincts were central to her life, to be without them would be the same as being forced to run blind on a highway.

Her hesitation etched itself onto her face, but the young man began to smile.

“If that does not appeal to you, I can teach you to control it. If you allow the visions to continue, they can drive you mad. I know from experience. But they are not unmanageable- I know that from experience also.”

“And the price?” Jo asked. 

“Far less, yet far more. I ask for you to become a… guide of sorts. My position as shop owner is a difficult one, and I have found myself becoming untethered from the world outside. I need someone to keep me connected.”

Jo let herself smile nervously. Every pore of her rational mind screamed that she was about to make a deal with the devil, a British devil in a well tailored suit. But her gut, that was telling her to trust this man. And if she was doing this to protect her gut instinct, she may as well listen to it. She reached out, and shook the man’s hand.

“Henry Morgan. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. And Jo?” He held out his other hand. “I require your watch.”

Jo’s brow furrowed.  
“Why?” She asked.

“Payment, for telling you about the lower price.”

Jo wrenched her hand from his, snarling. She undid her watch and yanked it from her wrist, before slamming it into Henry’s open palm. He gave her an impish grin.

\---

It amazed Jo how easily she molded Henry into her life. She accepts the action of going to the shop, first out of duty, then out of desire, and finally out of need, and she could not understand a time that she did not perform this action. Henry becomes a part of her life, and she is unable to understand her life without him in it. Like Sean in reverse, when some days the ache of him missing in her life is so pervasive that she cannot imagine a time when that hole was full. 

She is not sure if this knowledge terrifies or delights her. 

In the early mornings, she would entertain the dream that her newfound abilities would grant her a glimpse of her lost husband. Dabbling in the world of spirits rather than bringing them to the world of the living was surely safer. Yet not once did she see him. Jo had sacrificed the chance to see her husband again, and as time moved on was forced to accept the possibility that maybe she did not want to. 

Life trundled on, until the dead were left behind standing at the station and could no longer be accommodated on the train. 

\---

She was just a little girl. A little girl trapped in shackles, following their suspect every where he went. A young woman had drowned, and in her bones Jo knew that it was the woman’s husband. 

He stood hunched over, wiping his tears from his glasses and flitting his brown eyes around the room. One shackle was wrapped around his wrist, heavy enough to force his arm to curve at an odd angle. The chain led behind him, wrapping around the little girl. She trailed behind him with empty eyes, water dripping from her hair. 

The police department, due to lack of evidence, was forced to rule the woman’s death as a suicide. Jo’s gut feelings did not hold up in court, unfortunately.

\---

Yet somehow, days later, the man appeared in the shop. Henry had reclined in his seat, finger curling around the glass of wine in his hand. A man, charming yet somehow so awkward, becoming an all powerful shop owner with a simple change in posture.

Abe had led the man in, before leaving silently. Jo noticed that he had managed to avoid drawing too close to the customer- Abe could be comforting, or distant, or outright hostile. Each attitude reflected the customer, and Jo admired his ability to read someone so succinctly. No matter how many times he told her that it wasn’t perfect (once over drinks, Abe had spilled that he once let in a man whom nearly ended Henry’s life. If they could fool Abe, then they were truly dangerous).

“I have a wish,” the man said. “I feel like someone is following me. I have done since I was young, this constant feeling that there is something behind me, but when I check there’s no one there. And I-” He raised his hand. The shackles jangled. “I recently started having trouble moving my wrist. I want these feelings gone.”

“There will be payment.” Henry’s voice was heavy, as if there was force behind it.

“I can pay, I have money.”

“Not money.” Henry raised his hand. “Your locket.”

Jo was confused. The man was not wearing a locket, nor anything resembling one. And even if he was wearing one, it seemed an awfully small price to pay to remove the girl.

The man dug out his wallet, and pulled from it a locket hanging from a silver chain. With some reluctance, he passed it to Henry. Henry raised it, examining the jewelry as it glinted in the light. Jo felt unsettled when the light caught on the clasp, and she could have sworn that there was something trying to get out. 

Henry reached into his pocket, and handed the man a different necklace, this one also made of silver, with a strange black carving. The man took it, and placed it in the same place as he had kept the locket.

In the little girl’s hands was also a necklace. This one was instead gold. She looked at Henry, before lifting it and clasping it around her neck. The shackles began to rust. The little girl looked unsure, and Jo gave her a shaky smile.

The man left, and when his back was turned Henry gave the girl a small nod. She returned the nod, before the shackles dragged her out the door behind the man.

\---

A week later, Jo and Mike were called back to the apartment where the woman had drowned. Water soaked the floor, having flooded from the bathtub. The man was there, fully clothed, his eyes wide in terror. It seemed as if he had been dead for days. 

Soaking wet was a confession to the murder of his wife, and to the murder of his younger sister when he was a teenager.

The locket had fallen open in Henry’s hands, a lock of hair falling out, along with a smiling photograph of the little girl.

\---

“How did you end up becoming the shop owner, anyway?” Jo asked, lying on the couch and reaching for the wine bottle so that she could refill her glass. Henry stiffened. In the year that they had known each other, he had revealed almost nothing about his personal life. 

Henry sighed, and rolled onto his back. Jo wondered if it was so he could look at the ceiling, instead of at her. 

“When I was young, I felt drawn here, as you did. Except then the shop was not in New York, but in England. I could see these… horrid things, and I thought I was mad, or cursed. Witchcraft was very much unacceptable then.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. Henry was perhaps a few years older than her, yet he spoke as if he had been born in the witch trials. Maybe he was. Maybe he was born in the Medieval era. What do you know about Henry anyway?

“I found myself coming here, one afternoon. The shop owner took me in, taught me to accept and use my gifts. And in turn, I loved him.”

Henry shuddered, and Jo got the inescapable feeling that he was in tears, or close to it.

“Adam had decided on me to become the next shop owner, and I accepted. He had neglected to tell me that once ownership of the shop has passed on, the previous owner… they die. I watched him die. And from that day, I have never aged.”

\---

“Put the gun down!”

He was just a kid, fifteen at most, with a sheen of tears in his eyes and a gun in his hand. The same gun, Jo guessed, that had been used to kill the boy’s father. His eyes darted around, flicking between searching for an escape and looking into the barrel of Jo’s own gun. 

“I didn’t do it!” The kid cried. Just say anything to keep the situation from escalating. 

“I can help you. Just give me the gun.” Jo held out her hand, palm up both to take the gun and seem as non threatening as possible. The boy shook, taking a moment of indecision before moving to hand Jo the gun.

There was a gunshot, and Jo felt an explosion of pain in her left shoulder. The kid’s eyes were wide, he had not meant to shoot her. Inexperience and a twitch in his trigger finger. Jo fell to the ground, clutching her wounded shoulder as spots began to appear in her vision.

“Kid, wait!” She cried, but he was already beginning to run, knowing that the likelihood that anyone would believe that he had not meant to shoot Jo was even less than them believing he had not killed his father. 

Jo could see a dark cloud formed around him. Fear. Guilt. But he did not have the dark sludge trailing behind him, the telltale stench of a murderer. Just the marks of a frightened boy in a bad situation. Who had just shot a cop. 

She collapsed to the ground, gritting her teeth as fire bloomed in her shoulder. In her haze she saw a bird, blue and small, watching her carefully from a railing. The bird looked at her, and she saw a flash of gold in the bird’s feathers. 

“Jo!” 

It was Hanson, Hanson was here. She knew she should have waited for him to catch up with her, but the kid was running away and she had thought that the boy was a murderer, a murderer who was going to escape. Oh, what a difference a minute makes…

“Jo, hang in there.” Hanson was pressing his hand onto her shoulder, pressure in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Her mind conjured images of torn flesh, a bullet ripping itself through bone and exploding out the other side of her body. Or maybe it was still in there, making itself at home after barging into her body. 

Dimly, she was aware of Hanson calling for backup, begging for an ambulance and telling everyone to be on the lookout for a young male, Oscar Alvarez, fifteen years old…

Jo closed her eyes, listening to the sound of blood flowing through her and the dull thud of her brain as if it were banging against her skull. In the distance, she could almost hear music, a piano’s gentle notes breaking through the fog covering her mind. Above her, the bird tweeted, a promise to stay until the ambulance arrived.

A bird with familiar brown eyes…

\---

Jo woke to singing, a deep baritone humming its way into her thoughts. An old tune, one that she had heard in movies that was probably part of some classical piece that most people did not know the name of. It was soothing, and she let her mind drift in accordance to each note.

It took a cough to get her to open her eyes, a plea for water coming from her throat. A paper cup was held against her lips and she sipped quietly, before leaning back against her pillows. Hands reached around her head and patted the pillows gently in an attempt to make them more comfortable. Hospital pillows could never be comfortable, but it was the thought that counted. She was too strung out on painkillers to really care. 

Her vision slowly swam into focus, Henry appearing in the muddy water. He gifted her a small smile, and reached for her hand. His skin made her hand feel warm and comfortable, a cocoon of skin to keep her safe. 

“They let you in?” Jo was unsure if her voice slurred, or if her brain had difficulty understanding her speech. She could feel a lump in her throat, and blindly reached out her other hand for more water. Henry held the cup to her lips again.

“I’m afraid they would only do so if I said I was your partner. A friend that no one has heard of is not allowed through the doors, yet a secret boyfriend is apparently entirely within your repertoire.”

Jo snorted, wincing when the movement jostled her shoulder. She needed more painkillers. Painkillers were great. They made the pain go away and everything else go all fuzzy, a little blanket that she could wrap herself in and kick her feet against the ghosts battering at the window. 

“I don’t tell Hanson who I’m screwing. We do our best to stay away from those topics.”

“Well, I am afraid that he will now be under the impression that is you and I that are… ‘screwing’, as you so crudely put it.”

“Aw, Henry. I have a hole in my shoulder and am currently a little bit high. People thinking you and I are getting down nightly is rather the highlight of my day. I’m gonna get so many high fives, you’re just so very-” She reached out and tapped her three middle fingers on his nose. “Pretty!”

Henry closed his eyes, his posture that of a man whom had been in a similar situation before. The face of a father whose child had found the cookie jar, and had eaten so many that they could not possibly go to sleep. Papa Henry would be so darn cute, Jo thought. I should ask Abe for stories.

“You did a very foolish thing, chasing after that boy when you knew he had a gun.”

“I didn’t see the gun… Didn’t think, never do. You don’t have to worry about stuff like this, all immortal and everything.”

“I am not immortal, I simply have an extended life span.”

“What if the earth’s life span ends before yours does?”

“I have had plenty a nightmare about that situation, Jo, and it would make me happy if you would not discuss it.”

Jo imagined Henry floating aimlessly through space forever, moving his arms as if he was pretending to fly. Granting wishes to aliens who paid him in stars. Granting wishes to stars who paid him in aliens. She laughed again, granting her a glare in response. She then fell sober.

“He didn’t mean it.”

Henry answered with a grunt, fiddling with some flowers that someone had given her, a purple Get Well card peeking out from the ribbon tied around the vase. Jo wondered who the flowers had come from. 

“He said that he didn’t kill his father either. I’m worried about him, Henry.”

The hand returned, encasing hers.

“Can I ask you for something?”

Henry stiffened, but did not refuse. She continued.

“I want you to protect that boy, until I can. Is that okay?” Jo asked, and Henry nodded.

“A protection spell is hardly difficult in my line of work.”

“The price?”

Henry reached into the inside of his jacket, before pulling out a vial. Inside was a red liquid, a deep and rich colour that look eerily like blood. What appeared to be pieces of flesh drifted around in the red sea. Her flesh. Her blood. Jo felt as if she was going to be sick. 

“The price has been paid.”

\---

Jo wanted to etch it into her skin, a reminder that when making a deal with Henry to be very specific with what words one chose to use in their wish. She had found the boy, unharmed and not having harmed anyone else. And he had promptly walked onto a ledge.

“I didn’t do it!” He cried, his foot erring closer to the edge, closer to the long drop into the air. He would sail the sky, before pummelling into the ground where his corpse would be crushed by the oncoming traffic. If they were lucky, his body may be vaguely recognisable once they scraped his crushed remains off of the roadway. 

“I know, Oscar. Please, let me help.” She moved forward.

“Stay back!” Almost, so close to losing the youth completely to his own sorrow. His personal misty friend was cackling around him, claws sinking deeper into his brain. Blood welled up around the punctures, dripping into his eyes and mingling with the tears. 

“Come on, kid, just step back.” Hanson was bracing himself, ready to sprint forward and attempt to catch the boy before gravity won and flew him to his death. He had already inched towards the boy, protected from detection by the boy’s focus on Jo, and picked up the gun used to shoot Jo off of the roof.

“I can’t, I can’t do this,” the boy moaned.

“Oscar.” No one else saw him. Henry, standing calmly behind the boy. His arms were behind his back, and he looked like he did when he greeted Jo for dinner. Yet at the same time, there was that penetrating gaze that had rooted Jo to the ground when they first met at the shop. Henry, in his shop owner glory but his Henry Morgan kindness, visible to only Oscar and Jo. 

“I’m scared,” Oscar whimpered, and Henry nodded.

“I know. I can give you justice, for your father. You will still have to be punished for what you have done, but no more than what you deserve. It keeps the balance. Just step back from the ledge.”

Oscar watched the flow of traffic beneath him, the city of New York unaware of the boy about to jump off a building. He cowed under the pressure of the creature entangled around him, and readied himself to jump. But he did not.

Instead, Oscar turned and ran into Henry’s arms, sobs pouring from his body. Henry braced the boy’s head and held him tight, but Jo could not see his face. She wondered if anyone else could see what she saw. If they saw a boy embracing air as if it had rescued him from an abyss.

Jo moved forward, and pulled Oscar’s hands into a pair of handcuffs.

“It will be alright,” She whispered in his ear, leading him to the stairwell. If the arm that led him also stroked his shoulder in comfort, no one paid it any mind. Her own shoulder ached, still in a sling that had become little more than a nuisance to her.

Jo turned her head, and saw Henry deposit something that glinted with gold into his pocket. 

“My cross,” Oscar supplied in answer to her silent question. “It’s all I have left of my Dad.”

Jo smiled at him.

“It will be worth it, I promise.

\---

“So, they found the actual killer. The neighbour, apparently. Dispute over who had to pay for water damage to a wall. Pretty rubbish reason to murder someone, really. Oscar’s just got a month in juvie and some community service. Happy ending, thankfully.”

Jo knew that Henry was listening, even if he did not appear to be. He placed the cross in one hand, slowly letting go of the chain so that it gathered in his palm, and when it was done he placed it in the other hand. 

“The cross pay for all of that?” Jo asked, and Henry shook his head.

“It was only partial payment. You paid the rest- the blood of a witch is worth far more than a temporary protection spell. I have extended it to the duration of his life. He will be fine.”

Jo walked forward, embracing Henry. He stiffened, and she wondered if he had grown unaccustomed to hugs not given by his elderly son. After a few moments, she drew back, her hands still resting on his arms.

“Thank you, Henry.”

“You’re welcome, Jo.”

\---

Jo sees it one day, after finishing on a case. A Roman villa, standing amidst tall New York buildings and high rises. And yet, it was not drowned in shade cast by the giants surrounding it. On the contrary, it was bathed in the sunlight that the skyscrapers were desperate to conceal. Almost as if there were buildings around it at all.

Abe was sweeping away the beginning of Autumn leaves, a cat with strange markings slinking between his legs and accidentally getting a face full of leaves for its troubles. Henry smiled calmly, bringing the teacup to his lips and drinking. 

Jo smiled, and gave them a small wave. Abe beamed back, and waved with his entire arm before the cat like creature ran through the collected pile of leaves and he turned to scold it. Henry gave her a soft smile, and a nod.

“Who are you waving to?” Hanson asked. 

Only those that need the shop can see the shop.

“No one,” Jo replied, and they continued to walk. 

Behind them, a woman found herself at the strange gates. Her hands fiddled with the clasp of her handbag. Strands of blonde hair became stuck underneath the strap, tugging at her hair and pulling some strands from her head. She stood tall, in spite of her nerves. 

“Sorry, I was walking by and I… I saw this place in my dream last night and now just happen to see it when I’m on my way home. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“There is no such thing as coincidences. Only the inevitable.”

**Author's Note:**

> Writing a high Jo Martinez is the most fun I've had in ages. And obligatory inevitability quote had to be included, it's almost impossible to write xxxHolic without including it. 
> 
> Comments are very welcome.


End file.
